This investigation aimed to explain the mechanism of MFCA by applying this method on air-cooled engine factory which was suffering from high production cost. The results of this study revealed that MFCA is a useful tool to identify losses and inefficiencies of the production process. It is found that the factory is suffering from high losses due to material energy and system losses. In conclusion, it is calculated that system losses are the highest among all the losses due to inefficient use of available production capacity.

The present study aims to remove nickel ions from solution of the simulated wastewater using (Laminaria saccharina) algae as a biosorbent material. Effects of experimental parameters such as temperature at (20 - 40) C⁰, pH at (3 - 7) at time (10 - 120) min on the removal efficiency were studied.
Box-Wilson method was adopted to obtain a relationship between the above three experimental parameters and removal percentage of the nickel ions. The experimental data were fitted to second order polynomial model, and the optimum conditions for the removal process of nickel ions were obtained.
The highest removal percentage of nickel ions obtained was 98.8 %, at best operating conditions (Temperature 35 C⁰, pH 5 and Time 10 min).

In cognitive radio system, the spectrum sensing has a major challenge in needing a sensing method, which has a high detection capability with reduced complexity. In this paper, a low-cost hybrid spectrum sensing method with an optimized detection performance based on energy and cyclostationary detectors is proposed. The method is designed such that at high signal-to-noise ratio SNR values, energy detector is used alone to perform the detection. At low SNR values, cyclostationary detector with reduced complexity may be employed to support the accurate detection. The complexity reduction is done in two ways: through reducing the number of sensing samples used in the autocorrelation process in the time domain and through using the Slid

The main purpose of this work is the construction of an optical parametric amplifier (OPA) to generate a 629 nm pulsed laser. KTP nonlinear crystals were used for both parametric oscillation and amplification. A singly resonant parametric oscillator (OPO) is constructed to generate a signal of 1.54 μm and idler of 3.4 μm when the OPO system is pumped by 1.064 μm Q – switched Nd: YAG laser. The signal was then mixed with the pumping beam in OPA system to form the wanted wavelength. The obtained optical conversion efficiency was 60%.

Information from 54 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) brain tumor images (27 benign and 27 malignant) were collected and subjected to multilayer perceptron artificial neural network available on the well know software of IBM SPSS 17 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). After many attempts, automatic architecture was decided to be adopted in this research work. Thirteen shape and statistical characteristics of images were considered. The neural network revealed an 89.1 % of correct classification for the training sample and 100 % of correct classification for the test sample. The normalized importance of the considered characteristics showed that kurtosis accounted for 100 % which means that this variable has a substantial effect

This paper demonstrates an experimental and numerical study on the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) columns with longitudinal steel embedded tubes positioned at the center of the column cross-section. A total of 12 pin-ended square sectional columns of 150 × 150 mm having a total height of 1400 mm were investigated. The considered variables were the steel tube diameters of 29, 58, and 76 mm and the load eccentricity (0, 50, and 150) mm. Accordingly, these columns were divided into three groups (four columns in each group) depending on the load eccentricity (e) to column depth (h) ratio (e/h = 0, 1/3, and 1). For each group, one column was solid (reference), and the other three columns contained steel tubes with hollow rat

Modified asphalt is considered one of the alternatives to address the problems of deficiencies in traditional asphalt concrete, as modified asphalt addresses many of the issues that appear on the pavement layers in asphalt concrete, resulting from heavy traffic and vehicles loaded with loads that exceed the design loads and the large fluctuations in the daily and seasonal temperatures of asphalt concrete. The current study examined the role of polyphosphoric acid (PPA) as a modified material for virgin asphalt when it was added in different proportions (1%, 2%, 3%, 4%) of the asphalt weight. The experimental program includes the volumetric characteristics associated with the Marshall test, the physical properties, and th

The experimental and numerical analysis was performed on pipes suffering large plastic deformation through expanding them using rigid conical shaped mandrels, with three different cone angles (15◦, 25◦, 35◦) and diameters (15, 17, 20) mm. The experimental test for the strain results investigated the expanded areas. A numerical solution of the pipes expansion process was also investigated using the commercial finite element software ANSYS. The strains were measured for each case experimentally by stamping the mesh on the pipe after expanding, then compared with Ansys results. No cracks were generated during the process with the selected angles. It can be concluded that the strain decreased with greater angles of con

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is considered to be one of the most crucial tools for different applications, i.e. transportation, geographic information systems, mobile satellite communications, and others. Without a doubt, the GNSS has been widely employed for different scientific applications, such as land surveying, mapping, and precise monitoring for huge structures, etc. Thus, an intense competitive has appeared between companies which produce geodetic GNSS hardware devices to meet all the requirements of GNSS communities. This study aims to assess the performance of different GNSS receivers to provide reliable positions. In this study, three different receivers, which are produced by different manufactur

Background: Apexification is a method to induce a calcified barrier in a root with an open apex or the continued apical development of an incomplete root in teeth with necrotic pulp. MTA apexification has several advantages such as it neither gets resorbed, nor weakens the root canal dentin, and also sets in the wet environment. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of MTA in apexification and periapical healing of teeth with incomplete root formation and periapical infection. Materials and method: Apexification was carried out on fourteen permanent immature teeth of eleven children aged 7-12 years attended the teaching hospital of College of Dentistry, Baghdad University using mineral trioxide aggregate followed